


With the Storm

by escritoireazul



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Gen, Haunted Houses, Post-Canon, Trapped in a Storm, Trick or Treat: Extra Treat, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 21:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21204527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escritoireazul/pseuds/escritoireazul
Summary: Farmhouses were supposed to be cheerful things with white-washed fences, big windows to let in the sun, and a wide front porch overlooking the fields. What stood in front of them was a monstrosity.





	With the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OzQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OzQueen/gifts).

Farmhouses were supposed to be cheerful things with white-washed fences, big windows to let in the sun, and a wide front porch overlooking the fields. 

What stood in front of them was a monstrosity. 

Shingles were missing from the roof and lay scattered around the front yard, which was overgrown until grass brushed Mary Anne Spier’s knees and the bushes around the house nearly covered the first-floor windows. Shutters were broken and discolored, missing slats. A couple of them swung in the light breeze, creaking back and forth. The porch roof sagged, and the steps were cracked. The fence was barb wire. The entire house had gone gray with dark spots near the ground.

Next to Mary Anne, Kristy Thomas put her hands on her hips. “The only way to fix this place is gasoline and a match.”

“_Kristy! _” Stacey McGill snapped. “Inappropriate.”

Kristy’s cheeks burned red when she glanced sideways at Mary Anne. “Sorry.”

She smiled at Kristy and shook her head. It wasn’t the first time her best friend’s big mouth had gotten her in trouble. It wouldn’t be the last, either. Besides, Mary Anne had gotten past the trauma of her house burning down back when they were thirteen. No one had been killed, and though they lost a lot of sentimental things, in the end, they were just stuff. Stuff didn’t matter as much as people, not even the stuff that was all that was left of those people.

And it’s not like Kristy was _ wrong_.

Mary Anne was nineteen years old, in her freshman year of college, and apparently, had sort of inherited a death-trap farmhouse that may or may not be haunted. Even better, in order to actually inherit it, she to spend an entire weekend in it so she could “make an informed decision” about whether she wanted to keep it or not.

Lucky her.

What _ was _ lucky, though, was that her very best friends in the world were right there by her side. They’d been friends since middle school, they had solved plenty of mysteries together and survived everything from being shipwrecked on an island to being trapped in a blizzard to being stalked at a ski resort. If she was actually going to go through with this, having them with her made everything look a little brighter.

  
  


There’s a lot of history here, obviously, and not just between Mary Anne and her friends. To keep it short, though, Mary Anne grew up with most of them in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. She was raised by a single father because her mother died when she was young. Too young to remember her. Her mother was from a tiny town in northeast Iowa called Maynard, and up until she died a few months ago, Mary Anne’s maternal grandmother, Verna Baker, still lived there.

When Mary Anne said tiny, she meant _ tiny_. Only about 500 people lived there. Grandma Verna had a nice little farm just at the edge of town. The farmhouse there was cute, two stories, and immaculately kept even when Grandpa Bill died and she had to take care of it on her own.

She left that house to Mary Anne, too, with no caveats about it at all. Mary Anne would probably sell it despite all the good memories she had there from visits during high school. There was no possible way she could live in Maynard, and it would be too difficult to rent it out. It would be a great place for a family. She could picture it, a couple of kids, a sweet kitten, two smiling, doting parents. They would make that place a home again, and she would be happy for them.

The farmhouse in front of her was very much not that.

This one was several hours to the southwest of Maynard, down near the Missouri border, in the middle of nowhere. They took four different gravel roads to get there, and that was after driving forever on a two-lane state highway. They were several hours later than they wanted to arrive because they got lost a couple times, and the sun would set all too soon. Already, the horizon was turning the lightest pastel pink imaginable.

Mary Anne’s step-sister, Dawn Schafer, finished her perusal of the house. She’d set off to circle it the second they arrived and took her sweet time getting back. Now she watched the house thoughtfully.

“It’s haunted,” she said. “I’d swear by it.”

“If you _ would _ swear by it, then you don’t swear by it,” Stacey argued. “Which means you’re not actually sure it’s haunted.”

Dawn crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s haunted.” Her chin jutted forward at a muleish angle.

“Fifty bucks says it’s not.” Kristy also crossed her arms over her chest. Sometimes, she and Dawn clashed. Mostly it was because they’re both stubborn, kind of bossy people. (To put it nicely.) Every once in awhile, Mary Anne suspected their old rivalry over who was her real, true best friend raised its head. 

“Fine.”

Kristy thrust her hand forward, and Dawn shook it.

“If that’s out of the way, we should take our bags inside,” Mary Anne said. Even to herself, she sounded unenthusiastic.

Kristy laughed. “Why? It’ll be Monday before we finish unloading Stacey’s and Claudia’s things.”

Mary Anne giggled. 

“I’ll have you know, I only brought two suitcases,” Stacey told her, miffed. “I barely have everything I”ll need.”

“Need for what?” Kristy asked. “No one’s here but us.”

“And the ghosts,” Dawn said, her voice low, aimed toward Mary Anne. She didn’t look over, though. She kept watching the house. The wind plucked at her white blonde hair, long enough now that it nearly reached her thighs.

Claudia Kishi laughed and put her arm around Stacey’s waist. “I always did want a ghost lover,” she said. “Think Patrick Swayze’s still around to do some pottery with me?”

Kristy snorted. “We’re not here to romance the ghosts that don’t exist in the first place,” she said. “Now come on, I’m hungry, and the sooner we get everything inside, the sooner we can eat.”

_ Bossy_, Dawn mouthed at Mary Anne, but she went to get her things. They all did. Kristy didn’t rule their schedules with an iron fist anymore and hadn’t in a long time, but some things never changed.

  
  
The inside of the house actually looked better than the outside. It was cleaner than Mary Anne expected, no rotting furniture anyway, no dead animals hiding under sinks, barely any cobwebs. Thick dust was everywhere, but that was easy enough to sweep away.

There was no electricity, but there was a huge fireplace in the front room. The girls set up in there with sleeping bags, candles, and flashlights.

“We should have bought wood back in town,” Kristy said as she stood in the center of the room critically eyeing everything. “There was that guy in the parking lot.”

“There might still be a woodpile here,” Dawn told her. “I didn’t see one next to the house, but there are a few buildings out back.”

“And if there’s not, what do we do then?” Kristy asked. “We’re not exactly in the woods here or on a beach with driftwood. Unless we can burn old corn husks, we’ll be out of luck.”

“You can,” Mary Anne said. She wasn’t paying a lot of attention to them, though. “You can also twist hay to make sticks to burn.” She still reread the Little House books at least once a year. She loved reading about Laura and her family, and how they worked together to survive no matter the disaster.

“Look, there’s no use arguing,” Stacey broke in, even though Mary Anne wasn’t arguing. She was too busy listening. She thought she’d heard something, though now all she could hear was her friends and the blowing wind. “Either we find wood here or we don’t. If we don’t, we can drive back to town tomorrow morning and get enough for the rest of the weekend. We’ll survive one night without it.” She checked her watch. “But I do need to eat soon, so whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it soon.”

“Do you want some crackers?” Dawn offered. “I have both stoned wheat and five grain.” 

“That’d be awesome, thanks.” 

“I’ll go look for wood,” Kristy said and grabbed one of the flashlights. “Anyone want to help?”

Claudia shrugged. “I’ll go. I want to get some source pictures so I can paint this place when we go home. Sunset’s going to be great here, I bet.”

“I’ll go, too,” Mary Anne said. “Claudia won’t be much help looking for the wood, not if she’s getting her artist on.”

Claudia grinned and didn’t argue. She couldn’t. She knew as well as everyone else did that when she got caught up in art, you practically had to shake her out of it if you wanted her attention.

Outside, the sun was setting even faster than Mary Anne anticipated. Claudia brought her camera out with her, and sure enough, in just a couple minutes she was busy trying to line up the right shot of the house against the darkening sky.

Kristy and Mary Anne headed around to the back of the house, looking for the buildings Dawn mentioned. Two of them were pretty far out toward the edge of a giant field, tall grass blowing in the wind, stalks rustling together, but one was closer to the house.

“Think it was an outhouse?” Kristy asked. She glanced sidelong at Mary Anne. “Heck, do you think Stacey and Claudia have figured out they’ll have to _ use _ an outhouse if there is one and if not they’re stuck with the great outdoors?”

Mary Anne covered her mouth to hide her smirk. There was no sense in encouraging Kristy. She’d run off about that long enough on her own. “They know,” she said. “I warned them.”

“And they came anyway.” Kristy shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

Almost, Mary Anne couldn’t, either. Stacey had always been a city girl, born and raised, for a big chunk of her life at least, in New York City. She’d gone back for college. For that matter, Mary Anne had gone there, too, and sometimes felt like just as much a city girl now.

And here they were, in the middle of nowhere, no electricity, no running water, and, for Mary Anne, at least, no real idea of why they were actually there. She didn’t need the house. She didn’t _ want _ the house. Why she’d agreed to stay there for even a weekend, she still didn’t know.

Maybe she’d let herself be talked into it. Maybe she was curious about this strange old secret house. Maybe she wanted an excuse to have an adventure with her friends. It was spring break, after all, and she didn’t want to go to the beach with her college friends, not with how easy it was for her to burn.

Whatever the reason, she was there now, and she would make the best of it.

  
  
  
  
It wasn’t until Mary Anne and Kristy were gathering up the firewood that was scattered behind the shed that might or might not have once been an outhouse that Mary Anne realized the sky was getting dark not just because the sun was setting but because heavy black storm clouds were building on the horizon.

“I didn’t hear any of that in the weather report,” Mary Anne said when she pointed it out to Kristy.

“Guess storms blow up fast out here,” Kristy said. She didn’t sound too bothered by it. “I just hope the house doesn’t leak if it starts raining.”

Mary Anne gave a distracted nod. It took her a moment to tear her eyes away from the clouds. The air was charged with something that made the hair on her arms stand up, and the breeze had turned into a cold wind that carried with it the smell of damp, green growing things.

“Come on, Mary Anne!” Kristy bumped into her gently enough neither of them dropped the firewood filling their arms. It was enough to knock Mary Anne out of her distraction. “Let’s get inside before we get soaked.”

Despite Kristy’s warning, it wasn’t raining when they got back inside after a careful tramp up the stairs, avoiding the spots in the center that looked the weakest. It wasn’t raining when Kristy looked up the flue to make sure it wasn’t blocked before they started a fire. It wasn’t raining when they sat down to sandwiches and soda from the cooler, or when Claudia passed around chocolate to everyone but Dawn and Stacey after.

The house got cold, though, as night fell, and then colder. Mary Anne scooted closer to the fire and wrapped her sleeping bag around herself. Dawn sat on the hearth, practically inside the fireplace, and had her sleeping bag spread over her legs. She wore a heavy coat and gloves, which made Kristy cackle for a good three minutes when she put them on.

Kristy was stretched out wearing nothing but a long-sleeve t-shirt and gym shorts. Her only concession to the cold was to put on thick white socks that came well up her calves and to sit with her feet closer to the fire than her head.

Stacey and Claudia were somewhere in between, not quite as bundled up as Dawn or even Mary Anne, but nowhere near as exposed as Kristy. They sat close together, and their pajamas were heavy enough to be warm but were, at the same time, still fashionable. Stacey wore black and white striped pajama pants, black satin slippers, and a white sleep shirt with long sleeves that had black flowers embroidered at the hems. Claudia wore neon green flannel pajamas, but she’d cut up the shirt and sewn silver and pink and orange strips of fabric through the holes. The pajama bottoms had more of the same material in a riot of animals and plants that climbed all the way up to her hips. Her slippers were red and orange brocade and had little silver animals dangling off the outside. When she moved, they chimed together.

“You’re so going to owe me fifty bucks,” Kristy told Dawn. “We’ve been here for hours and there’s been no sign of ghosts.”

“It’s not even ten,” Dawn said. She had to lift her head out of her coat so her voice wasn’t muffled. “Give them time.”

“Where’s your scarf?” Mary Anne asked. She could have sworn Dawn had brought one with her, one that Mary Anne had knit for her birthday a few years ago from an aquamarine yarn that reminded her of the sea. Normally, Dawn kept it wrapped around her throat when she was cold rather than tucking her face into the top of her coat.

“I don’t know.” Dawn frowned. “I thought it was with my coat, but it wasn’t there.”

“Did you leave it in the car?” Stacey suggested. “We were kind of in a hurry to get inside.”

“Thanks for that, _ Kristy_,” Claudia muttered, but she also smiled and tossed Kristy another piece of chocolate.

Dawn shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll look in the morning. I don’t remember getting it out, but … maybe.”

“Or maybe a _ spooooooky ghooooooooost _ stole it.” Kristy made stupid hand gestures to underline her words. Mary Anne couldn’t help but laugh, and Kristy beamed. There was enough light from the fire and their flashlights that she could see the chocolate in Kristy’s teeth.

A crash of thunder shook the house, causing Stacey to squeal and clutch at Claudia, and the next thing Mary Anne knew, rain pounded against the walls and poured down the windows, hiding the darkness outside.

“It’s just a storm!” Kristy teased Stacey. We were all giggling at her, and Stacey batted the air, waiving away our teasing. “You acted like you saw a ghost.”

“You hope I didn’t,” Stacey shot back, “or you’d lose your little bet.”

“I’m not worried about that. I don’t believe in ghosts.” Kristy nodded her head as if to say that was the end of that.

The front door slammed open. This time, they all shrieked, even Kristy.

It creaked as it swung back and forth. Water blew in through the open door, soaking the wooden floor in seconds.

Dawn recovered first and started laughing. “What was that you said about not believing?” she asked Kristy. “Because you don’t _ sound _ like a disbeliever.”

“It’s the wind!” Kristy snapped. “It startled me. That’s it.”

“Some wind.” Stacey snuggled closer to Claudia, visibly shivering. “That door was shut and locked.”

“Shut,” Mary Anne agreed. “I don’t know about locked. It stuck earlier. I thought I’d locked it, but maybe not.”

Kristy got up and went over to the door. “The doorjamb is swollen,” she said. “No way the door closes tight. Wouldn’t take much wind to blow it open, and it’s windy as heck out there. See? No ghost.”

A loud noise started in the distance, a rumble that sounded out of place, almost like a train. 

Mary Anne scrambled to her feet and hurried to join Kristy. “Oh no,” she said. “Guys, this is bad.”

“What?” Dawn hopped up, too. “What’s wrong, Mary Anne?”

“I think a tornado’s coming!”

“A tornado?” Claudia cried. She and Stacey rushed over too. 

“How can you tell?” Stacey asked.

“That noise. Grandma Verna always said it sounded like a freight train when it came.”

“What do we do?” Dawn grabbed Mary Anne’s arm. “Do we hide? I know what to do for earthquakes, but not this!”

Mary Anne twisted her fingers together. “We take cover,” she said, the words coming slowly as she tried to remember what her grandmother had told her. “Inside room, no windows. Bathrooms are good. Basements.”

“That’s what the weird doors are outside!” Kristy cried out! “It’s a storm shelter.”

“Can we get to it from in here?” Stacey asked. “Because I don’t think going out there is a good idea.”

“We shouldn’t try,” Mary Anne said. “Look at this place. We don’t even know if the storm shelter is still safe. We’ll be better off finding a room in here.”

Kristy put her hand on Mary Anne’s arm. “Tell us what we need to do.”

Mary Anne took a deep breath. She was used to Kristy taking charge, but Kristy didn’t know the first thing about tornadoes. None of them did, not really. None of them had ever been through one. Mary Anne had the most training, even as little as she’d ever been taught. She could do this.

“Get our stuff,” she said. “Water, flashlights, sleeping bags. Food. Someone needs to put out the fire just in case.”

They scrambled to do what she said, Kristy and Dawn to the fireplace, Claudia and Stacey to gather their stuff. Mary Anne headed farther into the house. She’d explored it briefly earlier, and thought she remembered a bathroom toward the center of the house.

Sure enough, it had no windows, no outside wall. She called for the others to join her. It was a small space, dusty, and crowded with all of them inside even when Kristy took her sleeping bag into the clawfoot tub that still dominated the right side.

The others settled in on the floor, sitting next to each other, legs touching, wrapped in their sleeping bags to avoid the gritty dust on the floor. They didn’t try to talk at first, not over the roar of the storm, but eventually, the heavy silence beneath it got too much for Kristy.

“We should turn off all the flashlights but one,” she said. “Save the batteries just in case.” That’s exactly what they did, setting the biggest upright in between them so it was aimed at the ceiling and they all got some of the light.

“I hope we’re not stuck here long enough for that,” Claudia muttered. “I don’t have enough candy.”

Stacey snorted a laugh. “Because that’s the biggest concern right now. Not enough candy.”

Claudia dug her elbow into Stacey’s side. “It will be!” she said, but she was laughing, too. “You know how I get without junk food.”

Dawn pulled her knees up toward her chest and rested her cheek on them, head turned to look at the others. She was closest to the bathroom door, Mary Anne farthest, Stacey and Claudia between them. “You’re going to regret all that soda you drank,” she said, “when you have to pee and it’s still storming outside.”

“_I’m _ not going to regret it,” Kristy said. “I’ll just pee right here and you all can deal with it.”

“Gross, Kristy!” Stacey grabbed the first thing she could get her hands on, a candy bar, and chucked it at Kristy’s head. “Don’t even thinking about it.”

“Hey now! Don’t waste my chocolate!” Claudia and Stacey tussled a minute, both giggling. Kristy shrugged, peeled open the wrapper, and jammed half the candy bar in her mouth at one time.

Outside the bathroom door, something creaked. Dawn shoved herself into Stacey, nearly crawling into her lap before she settled again.

“Jumpy!” But Stacey put her arm around Dawn and gave her a short hug.

“It’s just a storm, Dawn,” Kristy said. “It’s not going to sneak into the house.”

“You keep blaming the weather, but that’s not all we’re hearing,” Dawn argued. “We don’t know what else might be out there.”

“Don’t you mean in here?” Mary Anne teased. “In here with us, lurking just outside the door?”

“_Mary Anne _!” Dawn gasped. It wasn’t like her to lean into the spooky stuff, but sometimes it was worth it to have fun with her friends. Maybe Dawn would calm down if they focused on the things she liked best.

“I don’t think there’s anything out there,” Mary Anne said, “but what do you think would be if you were right? What kind of ghost would haunt a place like this?”

It was Stacey’s turn to boggle at Mary Anne. “You really want to tell ghost stories _ now _?” she asked.

Mary Anne shrugged. “It’ll pass the time,” she said. “Distract us from the storm. I don’t think anything else will keep everyone’s attention.”

“And scare the piss right out of them,” Claudia said, but she leaned forward and started passing out more candy. “Okay, I’ll bite. Tell us a ghost story.”

“Lonely farmer’s wife,” Dawn said. Sure enough, she looked calmer, and thoughtful. “Watched her kids leave and her husband die. Grew old here. Died here. Remains here after, looking for a new family.”

“That’s almost sweet,” Stacey admitted.

“Unless you think too hard about what she’ll do if she finds her new family.” Kristy hooked her arms over the edge of the bathtub. “I bet it’s outlaws, running away from the law. They got stuck here during a storm and BAM, died.”

“Bam?” Dawn laughed, and it swept through the others. “That’s kind of dramatic of you, Kristy. What happened, did they get struck by lightning?”

“Maybe they killed each other,” Claudia suggested. “Maybe there was a long storm, and they let the house get to them, got scared, and killed each other.”

“You just want them to have hidden a treasure here,” Dawn said. “It’s always about the buried treasure with you.”

“I could wear a parrot on my shoulder,” Claudia said, eyes shining. “Sew gold doubloons onto my pants.”

“First of all, we’re pretty far inland for pirates,” Stacey told her. “Second, where in the world are you going to get doubloons before we find the treasure?”

Claudia waived that away. “Unimportant detail. I’ll figure that out later.”

“Maybe there’s a little girl ghost,” Mary Anne said. Her voice sounded dreamy. “Someone who wanted to get out of Iowa but never got the chance. Someone who watched the sky and dreamed her dreams and wished upon stars, and died too young.”

“That’s sad. Poor girl.” Stacey resettled a little more comfortably against the wall. 

“Or creepy!” Dawn touched the door, then jerked her hand back to her lap. “She could be mad at the world for keeping her here. Mad at everyone who comes and can leave again. Mad enough to make sure they don’t leave.

As if she’d timed it perfectly, the door rattled. They all jumped, pushing away from it. Mary Anne kept her eyes on the door handle, her breath coming too fast, her heart pounding.

“Way to rile her up,” Kristy told Dawn. “If there really is a ghost here, and I’m sure there’s not and you owe me money, talking about it and getting the details wrong might piss it off. Sure would me, if I linger.”

“You’d be the worst ghost,” Dawn said, and laughed. “There’d be softballs everywhere. That’s not scary at all.”

“Yeah?” Kristy looked sly. “You just wait until I start throwing them at your head.”

The door rattled again, but their response was calmer this time.

“Do tornadoes really pick up whole houses?” Claudia asked Mary Anne. “What happens if we’re swept away? I bet we won’t end up in Oz.”

“Don’t think about that,” Mary Anne soothed her. “I’m sure it will pass us by.” She wasn’t sure at all, though. There was no way to be sure when it came to storms. When it came to life at all, she guessed.

They talked about lighter things after that, and, somehow, Mary Anne dozed off, her head on Claudia’s shoulder.

When she woke later, jostled by Claudia’s movements, everything was quiet.

“I think the storm stopped,” Claudia whispered. It took Mary Anne a moment to figure out why she was so quiet. Kristy, Dawn, and Stacey had all fallen asleep too. On Claudia’s other side, Stacey stirred, but Kristy and Dawn were still out.

Mary Anne blew out a breath of air. She’d dreamed weird dreams about little girls and things in the field, about pipes full of blood and bony fingers scratching through wallpaper from the inside out, about things flying with the storm and the clouds. Stupid dreams, inspired by what they’d talked about, what had happened around them, but creepy dreams, too, dreams that lingered and made her skin crawl.

“Let’s wake them up and get out of here,” she said.

“You’re supposed to spend the whole weekend.”

Mary Anne laughed, too loud, startling Dawn awake. Kristy mumbled something, but she was coming out of her sleep, too.

“I don’t need to spend the entire weekend,” she said. “I’ve made my decision. Someone else can make this place a home again.” Just like the other farmhouse. Just like all the places people lived and left for new people to find.

“No haunted house for you?” Dawn asked, her voice raspy.

“Oh,” Mary Anne said, and brushed messy hair out of her face. “I don’t believe in no ghosts.”

The stairs creaked while they packed up. The front door stuck closed until Kristy put her strength into tearing it open. And when Mary Anne stood at the car a moment, looking back at the house, she saw the faintest flicker of shadow and light in the upstairs window. They never did find Dawn's scarf, not in the house, not in the car. Mary Anne promised to knit her another because no one wanted to stick around to look for it.

She smiled to herself as she slid into the passenger seat, letting Kristy drive. Someone else could have a house to become a home. Someone else could have the ghosts.


End file.
